


Masking

by Porkchop_Sandwiches



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Randomness, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-24 23:38:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16650052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Porkchop_Sandwiches/pseuds/Porkchop_Sandwiches
Summary: “It doesn’t sting. You’re just pressing down too hard. You ever like pet a fucking kitten or something, Mr. White? Ease up or some shit.”





	Masking

“ _Yo,_ can you just stop touching me? And why the hell do I gotta be shirtless for this?”

Jesse made a hissing sound between his teeth as if Walt were scalding him. His hip rattled the glass measuring cup still half full of Skyler’s coconut milk. There was hardly more than a dollop of the stuff on his battered left cheekbone.

“Haven’t heard you complaining about that in a while.”

It was odd saying as much without a trace of sarcasm. Walt figured it had been, what, six weeks since they’d…started whatever exactly this was turning into? This… _thing_ between the two of the them. A subject much more tender than Jesse’s face, and apparently not on the list of Jesse-approved topics to “hash out,” as he’d called out after him in the lab.

Walt reached for the boy again, but Jesse jerked back almost abruptly enough to tip himself into the kitchen sink where he was balanced on the lip of it like something small waiting to be bathed. Half naked from the waist of his baggy blue jeans up, he nearly looked the part. Walt wouldn’t have called him bony exactly but most certainly slender. His chest was getting pinker with the rise in his temper. Walt still couldn’t decide just how stupid he thought that dragon tattoo was. The lighting was never great in the kitchen, even at eleven in the morning, but Walt’s options were scarce. He attempted to brush his fingers along Jesse’s cheek.

“Fucking bite me why don’t you? _Asshole._ That shit smells like a mothball fucked a mothball.”

Walt honestly couldn’t smell much more than Skyler’s hazelnut coffee creamer. It was a little chilly in the kitchen.

Rolling his eyes, he dipped his index finger into the rust-colored mixture. “Just stay still.”

Jesse grabbed Walt’s wrist this time. “It fucking hurts okay? _My face_. You know that thing your asswipe of a brother-in-law decided to go all Stone-Cold-Steve-Austin on. Is this stuff even safe to use with like cuts and shit?”

Walt used his free hand to raise the shallow Tupperware of homemade face mask as if presenting the final results of an experiment to a curious student.

“Turmeric, coconut milk, Greek yogurt, and honey are all calming ingredients. And your skin isn’t broken anymore so this shouldn’t hurt. If it stings, I can always add a little more honey.”

“It doesn’t sting. You’re just pressing down too hard. You ever like pet a fucking kitten or something, Mr. White? Ease up or some shit.”

Walt almost had to literally bite his tongue because it very much sounded like Jesse had just asked Walt to pet the boy like a cat. And instead of smacking him like Walt wanted to, he scooped out a fair amount of the stuff and gingerly began to spread a thin though even layer starting at the narrow line of Jesse’s jaw. A stray glob trickled down Jesse’s neck. And it wasn’t until it happened again that Walt realized Jesse was absently swinging his feet.

Walt gripped Jesse’s chin a little harder than he needed to. “You kick me and I swear….”

“ _Ow._ Fuck man, what? Invite me over and decide to be like a total psycho?”

“Do you want to go home, Jesse?”

Jesse sucked his teeth and shrugged, encouraging the mess he’d started on his neck to travel down to his collarbone, which Walt wiped up with his thumb. He had goosebumps in spite of how warm his skin felt.

“Are you cold?”

“Nah,” Jesse said, frowning. “Why?”

Walt wondered what Jesse was expecting when Walt had first asked him to come over. He shrugged. “If you were still wearing your shirt, you’d look like an infant spit up on you.”

Jesse sniffed. “Where’s uh…the baby? You know, like your baby? Holly?”

“With Skyler and Junior visiting Hank in the hospital.” Walt couldn’t decide why but Jesse seemed almost disappointed. Regardless, he reached for him again. “This should help, you know. You’re the one who keeps complaining about how dry and painful his skin feels. Turmeric is a strong anti-inflammatory due to a phytochemical called curcumin. Among other things, it soothes skin irritants. And”—

“Why can’t I just slap some new band aids on and call it a fucking day?”

“--when mixed with raw honey and coconut milk, it helps tighten and brighten skin. And”—

“Oh my god, Mr. White, _please_ sound gayer.”

\--“ _And_ ,” Walt said. “Turmeric also heals wounds. Bandages have zero healing properties. If you really want your face feeling any better, then it doesn’t need a band aid. It needs to heal. While you can add turmeric into soups and other foods, I thought a face mask might be a little more soothing. Some R & R.”

Walt thought it might shut Jesse up for just a little too. _96 million, yo. What’s more important than money? What’s wrong with you, Mr. White?_ Walt was shuttling himself between the lab and the house and Hank’s hospital room. He needed some quiet. But he didn’t need to isolate Jesse. No, that was too risky. It was fifty-fifty right now. So he’d invited Jesse over to his home when he knew Skyler would be away. Shoulder rubs were his go-to but Jesse’s were still too sore. Jesse was angry, inflamed, and Walt was apparently literally soothing the situation with overpriced coconut milk, though still with ingredients he already had on hand. He didn’t need Jesse agitated with their new underground meth lab setup and dead-eyed boss. No ruffling feathers. With Fring around, Walt couldn’t afford any ruffled feathers…or squawking.

And besides this really was supposed to be restful and relaxing. For Walt at least it was almost like finger painting, a way to shut his brain off in the quiet lull of the morning.

He got maybe a minute and a half of silence.

“You think in like Greece they call Yoplait American yogurt and they call Greek yogurt just like yogurt?”

Walt wasn’t sure if he should laugh or not. It didn’t help that the orange paste on the boy’s face was making him look like an underfed Oompa Loompa.

“You’re not supposed to talk when you’re wearing a face mask.”

Jesse scowled. “ _Bullshit_. All chicks do is drink wine and talk with this shit all over their face. Don’t tell me how this stuff works, this ain’t my first like rodeo or whatever.”

Walt only had the last portion of Jesse’s forehead left uncovered. “So you’re telling me you and an ex have spent Sunday evenings wearing avocado facials over a bottle of white and a boxset of _Sex and the City_?”

“Eat me,” Jesse said.

There wasn’t much heat to his words, gaze lowered to the cluttered kitchen counter. Walt would need to clean up in an hour or so before Skyler came home.

“Done,” Walt said. He set aside the empty Tupperware. “According to the internet, you should be able to wash it off in fifteen minutes.”

“So what you just gonna stare at me for fifteen minutes?”

Walt hadn’t realized he had Jess boxed in against the sink. But before he could move much, Jesse loosely held his wrist. He dropped his hold and scratched the back of his head.

“What?” Walt asked.

Jesse’s eyes flicked to Walt’s crotch, his face, the plastic bear of honey by his side that was suddenly fascinating. He cleared his throat, looking remarkably shy as he splayed his legs wider apart.

He was gnawing on his lower lip with an orange eyebrow arched, speaking barely above a gritty whisper, “You uh…like…want to?”

\---

_Five months earlier_

“Yo, why isn’t this shit green?”

Jane turned her head back from where she was bent over his bathroom sink. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” Jesse said. “Whenever you see like some lady wearing one of these she’s got like cucumbers on her eyes with all this green shit on her face, looking like some kind of fucking zombie or something.”

“Like a creature from the lagoon?” Jane wobbled her head sarcastically and snickered. “We’re not making table-side guacamole; we’re doing face masks.”

With the way her body was angled and the white tank top she was wearing, she almost looked like a crane. Or maybe a swan: like all graceful, pale-white in a moonlight-romantic-shit kind of way, smart but sort of mean sometimes. Her long neck looked all delicate and shit too. Jesse wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her with her hair up.

"What?"

Jesse lifted a shoulder. "You look pretty."

Jane snorted and scrubbed black goo on her forehead. It was almost freaky how dark the shit was, like the mud you'd find deep down somewhere, like you were putting in a pool or maybe digging a fucking grave.

Jesse looked down at the oatmeal-honey-mystery mix he was holding. It looked like something his mom would have made him from breakfast when he was a kid except without the little dinosaur eggs. He felt like he should have been hungry but he'd smoked too much glass to really like register it or whatever. Food never mattered when he was high or craving another hit or too tired or nervous or like sad. He was feeling alright aside from starting to shake a little; probably wouldn't be hungry until like tomorrow night.

Jesse took a big handful of tan gunk from the cereal bowl Jane had made this stuff in and just fucking starting smearing it on. "So like why are we doing this again?"

"Tomorrow's my first meeting after getting my eighteen-month chip. Don't want to look like I've been hosting slumber parties in a crack den. I look tired. My complexion is absolute shit. The coffee grounds should help."

Jesse sort of wanted to say that staying up til 2 AM wasn't going to help. It was fucking bright in here. Smelled like breakfast. Jane had her stuff on basically every surface: measuring cups and Folgers and honey and Quaker Oats and a new eight ball they swore they were going to flush.

"Yo, why don't I get any coffee?"

"Because you have _gorgeous_ skin," Jane said, smiling, talking to him in the mirror. Her face was already half-covered. "But it would have been boring if I'd done it alone. Plus, you look handsome as a mushy, oatmeal creature from the lagoon. And you said your skin felt dried out."

Being in the desert and a cramped-as-fuck RV with a gasmask strapped to his face definitely didn't help with that shit.

It was sort of crowded in here too but like in a fun way. Everything was a little muggy but it reminded him of hot-boxing with Combo and Pete in the backseat of his Monte Carlo. It was almost exciting.

"Yeah," he said.

He didn't have any more face to put stuff on so he just stood there. She looked like she was doing a second layer. He could see the tops of her breasts from the mirror. 

"All done," she said, smiling real big, face looking like a whole bunch of Oreo crumbles on the surface of a glass of milk. Rocking on her heels, she swiped the eight ball. She didn't make eye contact with him. "We're just going to do a little. We've got fifteen minutes to kill anyway. We flush the rest."

She didn't really ask him but even if she had Jesse would have said yes.

"My lighter's by"--

She was already slipping by him out the door. Though she called from the bedroom, “So tell me again was your favorite part of O'Keefe exhibit was today. The door paintings, right? Or was it the vagina ones?"

“No.” Jesse shrugged even though couldn't see him. "Being there with you."

He could hear her making dramatic gagging noise, and he smiled at the floor. Glancing at himself in the mirror, he fucking freaked himself out even though he'd seen himself with this shit on for the past few minutes.

He raised his voice a little. "It's a good thing this stuff smells good 'cause it totally looks like puke."

" _Delicious_. You want to come out here and give me a little taste?” She made a loud smacking sound with her lips. 

Jesse chuckled, gave like a parting nod to the oatmeal creature from the lagoon and flipped the light off.  

\---

" _Fuck. Gah..._ why does this shit feel so good?"

Jesse was gasping, panting, grunting. Walt gripped onto the kitchen counter with one hand and cupped Jesse's hip with the other. He had the boy bent over the sink practically. Walt was sweating under his shirt with his slacks around his shins. It was strange seeing so many bruises on someone’s back. Walt hadn’t realized just how much so Jesse had been kicked when he was down. He tried avoiding the bruising but Jesse was pressing back into him. Jesse’s skin felt balmy pressed against him even through Walt’s button-down shirt.

Walt was rocking up into Jesse more so than thrusting; not exactly slow, but not too fast either.  

He'd retrieved the condom and lubricant from his bedside table. They weren't going to be used otherwise. The glass measuring cup had been a causality when Walt had flipped Jesse around, though despite the spilled milk and broken glass this was shaping up to be marginally less cumbersome than their first time in the back of Walt's Aztec. Even if they weren't shoved into the back of a vehicle, they were still screwing like they were: Walt right behind Jesse like their lower limbs were magnetized to each other's.

And it wasn't nearly as bombastic as Walt sometimes fantasized. But his teeth still felt like they were pulsing, his thoughts, his knuckles of the hand he was draping over Jesse's to finish him off. They stroked Jesse together: fifty-fifty. 

" _Mr. White."_   

Jesse spoke in a growl, somehow sounding equal parts offended and elated. But it didn't matter much when Walt was finishing close behind him after two languid thrusts, coming hard as he barely leaned against the curved arch of Jesse's back.

" _Shit."_ Walt was panting.

Jesse smelled like a Waffle House: cigarettes and syrup. Except it was really honey that Walt was detecting; sweeter. The honey almost masked the cigarettes entirely.

The boy had his forehead resting against the lip of kitchen sink like he'd just been sick.

" _Shit_." He sounded like he was catching his breath. "Yo...is it weird that I could totally go for some honey toast?"

Walt rubbed Jesse's elbow. "Rinse your face. I'll get the bread."

"Two pieces?"

"Sure." Walt found himself absently petting Jesse's forearm. "I could scramble a few eggs too."

"Sweet," Jesse said. He sighed before pulling his pants back up and turning on the faucet. "Yo, put cheese on that shit too if you got it."

Breakfast: why hadn't Walt thought of that in the first place? He could do breakfast.  Hell, Walt even had an appetite. He reached above the stove for the larger of the two frying pans.  

Once he got the eggs out, he waited for the burner to heat up. He watched the ink of Jesse's skull tattoo twist with his movements, the face looking distorted while Jesse wiped at his own face, mask washing right off.

 

 

 

 


End file.
